The Confederates on their grim heights were not simply waiting. Lee could not believe that Burnside was to commit the blunder of throwing his columns against the unassailable hills. If there was a flaw in Lee’s defensive position, it was that it was too good, so nearly impregnable that no sane opponent would dare attack. It was incredible that Burnside would come into the trap. Down from the semicircle of hills looked every piece of ordnance Longstreet’s corps could muster—over carefully laid zones of fire. The ranges ran from fifteen hundred to three thousand yards.
Lee would wait and delay his concentration by leaving Jackson’s corps scattered where it could watch the enemy. If Burnside showed his hand, Lee could rapidly bring together his army. Breastworks rose. Privates on Marye’s Hill, the greatest of the heights, were uncomfortable, and over the protests of engineers they deepened rifle pits. Longstreet approved: “If you save the finger of one man’s hand, that does some good.”
On December twelfth, in a foggy noon lit by a half-hidden sun, Lee learned that he was to be attacked on the ground he had chosen. Lee and Jackson were staring down on the enemy when von Borcke, much excited, arrived from Stuart’s headquarters. The cavalry had found the Federals massing on the right, the German said; they had gone to within a stone’s throw of the enemy line. Lee asked von Borcke to lead them to that place.
The little cavalcade halted at a barn, crept through a ditch to a hillside, until Lee and Jackson, standing in the open, could sweep the Union lines with their glasses. The cautious von Borcke watched from the safety of the ditch. The enemy was just four hundred yards away, and the signs of coming assault were unmistakable. Two pontoon bridges shuddered under columns of men and wagons and guns. Infantrymen already dug rifle pits in an endless line at the riverside. In one small area, Lee counted thirty-two guns in position. The commander turned away with content on his face, and throughout the day he was in high humor and seemed always on the point of smiling. He worked to receive Burnside. “I shall try to do them all the damage in our power when they move forward,” he said.
With all doubt removed, he wasted no time in concentrating the army. Jackson was ordered to bring in D. H. Hill’s division from Port Royal, down-river, and Taliaferro’s men from the rear at Guiney’s Station. Jackson filled in the right front, below Longstreet, a front of twenty-six hundred yards for his thirty thousand troops. The first blow, it seemed obvious, would be struck against Jackson.
Most of Old Jack’s front was steep and wooded, easy to defend. There was one flaw, which General Lane noted and reported to A. P. Hill, who did not correct it. A bit of marshy woodland, almost triangular in shape, left a gap of some six hundred yards between the brigades of Lane and Archer.
For once Jackson had strength to spare. Almost three quarters of his men were placed in reserve, or in a third line near the crest of the hills. He had about 125 cannon, but could find places for only 47, so broken was the ground. Hardly a soldier was to be seen on his front; officers hid them in the woods, and through the day of prodigious preparations by the enemy, the hungry troops watched and ate. Far below them the broad plain was alive with enemy regiments. An artillery duel did nothing to drive them off. Night fell with increasing coldness; Lee allowed no fires, and the men suffered. Thousands of Jackson’s troops were still without shoes despite all efforts to clothe them. At least one soldier died of exposure in the freezing mists.
Morning came with Lee’s line seventy-eight thousand strong, scarcely a man in exposed position. Burnside was on the point of launching his splendid army of 125,000. In snatches of bugle calls and drum rolls the army settled. A sharp wind gnawed at the hillsides; there was a brief time for breakfast. The bands played a few lively airs. It was almost as if this were a fanfare for Jackson.
Stonewall, accompanied by his aide, J. P. Smith, galloped to Lee’s headquarters near the Telegraph Road. He was dazzling. Without warning or explanation he had decked himself in his gaudy finery. He wore the coat Stuart had given him; a fancy blue cap with broad gold braid, from his wife; gleaming boots from an admirer in the Valley; new saber and spurs from a cavalry officer. He did not ride Sorrel today. Jim, after long argument, had persuaded him to ride a larger, handsomer horse.
Jackson rode down cheering lines of men, but there were undertones: “Great God! Old Jack’s drawed his bounty money and bought clothes.”
“He don’t look right—like some damned lieutenant. I’m afraid he’ll not get down to work.”
Longstreet and other officers about Lee baited Jackson, laughing over the glittering garments, and someone asked him why the finery was on display. “It’s some of the doing of my friend, Stuart, I believe,” Jackson said. Stuart and the others began teasing him in earnest, but developing battle diverted them.
Lee asked the opinion of the general officers on the day’s plan. Jackson spoke instantly. Attack, he said. If men were launched down the slopes before fog lifted from the plain, the Federal guns could not reach them. The enemy could be flung into the river. Stuart agreed, and others nodded. Lee heard them in quiet, but said in a tone that brooked no questions: No. We will stand here. If the enemy is broken, there will be time enough for attack.
Jackson remained silent.
Longstreet was not content to spare Jackson further badinage. He pointed over the plain where the Federals moved without end in their grand divisions. Some men, remembering, were to couch Longstreet’s words more gracefully, but J. P. Smith, who sat beside Jackson, recalled them as:
“Ain’t you frightened, General?”
Jackson’s face was unsmiling as he replied to Old Pete.
“Perhaps I’ll frighten them after a while.”
Jackson turned to go, but Longstreet called after him. “Jackson, what are you going to do with all those people over there?”
“Sir, we will give them the bayonet.”
He went down the lines with Smith, drawing fire from Federal sharpshooters. Below them enemy skirmishers moved, the first of the long blue files. The Union boys all but halted as a strange chorus came from the front lines of the Confederates:
“Haaaaaa! Bring on them good breeches, Yanks! You might’s well hand over the coats and shoes now as later!”
Jackson lost men from his staff as the day’s work began. Kyd Douglas, who had returned for temporary duty, was ill with a fever and was sent from the field by a doctor. Jackson passed and gave him a solemn handshake as he went rearward. Soon after, Sandie Pendleton had a close call; a bullet smashed a knife he carried in a pocket and bruised him painfully. Old Jack himself came under fire. He treated the experience as casually as ever.
He rode far to the front with only Smith at his side; a sharpshooter fired a bullet between their heads, and Jackson turned to Smith.
“Mr. Smith, hadn’t you better go to the rear? They may shoot you.”
The Federals were now coming in earnest. Jackson estimated their strength in his front at fifty-five thousand. And when, at ten thirty, Lee ordered the guns on the far left to fire a few test rounds, the Yankees jumped forward at Jackson’s line. The rush was soon halted by a brazen young artilleryman, John Pelham, who wheeled two guns into the open and tore at the infantry in the field. He stayed there, moving his guns about like charmed pieces, daring the fire of sixteen enemy cannon. He finally retired at Stuart’s third peremptory order. The enemy then clashed with A. P. Hill’s troops.
Jackson watched from the hilltop, with the anxious von Borcke near by. The German fretted about the proximity of the Federals, so near and yet unchallenged.
“Major, my men have sometimes failed to take a position, but to defend one, never!”—a thought Jackson was to recall before many months had passed. He continued, “I am glad the Yankees are coming!”
Of the scene now unfolding, von Borcke recalled:
“Suddenly it seemed as though a tremendous hurricane had burst upon us … a howling tempest of shot and shell hurled … by not fewer than 300 pieces of artillery. Hundreds of missiles … crashed thro
ugh the woods, breaking down trees and scattering branches and splinters.…
“And now the thick veil of mist that had concealed the plain rolled away, like the drawing up of a drop scene at the opera, and revealed to us the countless regiments of the Federal army. At this moment I was sent … to General Jackson with the message that the Yankees were about to commence their advance. I found old Stonewall standing at ease on his hill, unmoved in the midst of terrible fire, narrowly observing … through his field glass.
“The atmosphere was now perfectly clear, and from this eminence … afforded … a military panorama the grandeur of which I had never seen equaled. On they came, in beautiful order, as if on parade, a moving forest of steel … waving their hundreds of regimental flags … while their artillery beyond the river continued the cannonade.”
In the Union ranks things had a different look. A Cincinnati newspaper correspondent wrote: “Our batteries … opened … I saw with horror that at least half the shells were bursting behind our own men, and that they were certainly killing more of them than the enemy.”
This attack came within eight hundred yards of A. P. Hill’s lines before the Confederate officers allowed their gunners to fire. Then cannon shattered it and, with two volleys, drove the Union troops out of range.
Now the Federals struck the left side of the line, against Marye’s Heights, where there waited crowded regiments in a sunken road, a perfect entrenchment, with the guns and thousands of other muskets on the hill behind. William Owen of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans watched the enemy come:
“At last the Federal line appeared above the ridge in front of us and advanced. It seemed like some huge serpent about to … crush us in its folds. The lines advanced at the double-quick, and the alignments were beautifully kept. The board fences enclosing the gardens fell like walls of paper. Instantly the edge of Marye’s Hill was fringed with flame.… Nearer and nearer the enemy’s line advanced, came within range of canister and we gave it to them. Now the Federals were near enough to the infantry in the sunken road … for the smoke was beginning to cover the field.… Great gaps appeared; we gave them canister again and again; a few left the ranks—more followed … running in great disorder toward the town … the field before us was dotted with patches of blue.
“Another division now advanced in splendid style … and in a little more than fifteen minutes … was forced back. Of the 5,000 men led into action, 2,000 fell in the charge.… The brave fellows came within five and twenty paces of the stone wall but encountered such a fire of shot, canister and musketry as no command was ever known to live through.… Another division now came up and again assailed the hill … but nothing could live before the storm of lead that was hurled at them from this distance. They wavered, broke and rushed headlong from the field.”
Lee, watching this, revealed a new side of his nature. He said to Longstreet:
“It is well that war is so terrible—we should grow too fond of it!”
Now the watchers on the hills saw the victorious finish of a trying hour for Jackson: The enemy had swept through the unguarded bog on his front, straight into the woods, and soon had been tearing at his center. He had calmly sent up a reserve division under General Early; but the fighting had raged in the timber for a long and deadly interim before the bluecoats began to drop back; and an impetuous charge followed them into the open.
That was the only piercing of the Confederate line, and the only sally into the open by Lee’s troops. For most of the day it was only dreadful artillery and musket practice. Once Lee became anxious for Longstreet’s lines.
“General,” he said, “they are massing very heavily and will break your lines, I’m afraid.”
Longstreet was still in his expansive, confident mood of the early morning. “If you put every man on the other side of the Potomac in the field to approach me over the same line, and give me plenty of ammunition, I will kill them all before they reach my line. Look to your right; you are in some danger there, but not on my line.”
Lee was in danger nowhere. The enemy halted attacks on Jackson’s lines in the early afternoon and made but two more drives against Longstreet, which served only to pile the bodies deeper before the Sunken Road. It was almost dark when the senseless frontal assaults came to an end.
With the disappearance of the enemy skirmishers, Jackson tried to launch a counterattack he had planned for hours but had not discussed with Lee. After a few moments of confusion, he got batteries into the open and had some of his brigades trailing out of their trenches. But an overpowering enemy fire lit the night, sweeping the field his men would be forced to cross, and he reluctantly canceled plans for the attack.
He had not given up without thorough preparation. He had called Dr. McGuire to him and put him through one of his painful military catechisms, seeking to pass an important order without divulging another of his secrets.
“How much bandage do you have, McGuire?”
“I can’t be sure, but I have enough for another battle.”
Jackson frowned.
“Why do you want to know how much we have?”
Sighing reluctantly, Jackson said, “I want to tie a yard of bandage around the arm of every man, so that they will know each other in the night attack.”
McGuire said he had no such supply of bandage and suggested that the men be asked to rip their shirts and tie rags on their arms. By the time Jackson’s officers had the orders—and discovered that no more than half the men had shirts—the attack had been called off.
On the enemy side of the field, General Burnside rode with his hat pulled far down on his face: “That night I went all over the field on our right; in fact, I was with the officers and men until nearly daylight. I found the feeling to be rather against an attack the next morning.”
J. L. Chamberlain, who helped with the Federal wounded on this bitter night—which was lit by the flame of the aurora borealis—saw far more than his commander:
“Out of that silence from the battle’s crash … rose new sounds more appalling still—rose or fell, you knew not which, or whether from the earth or air: a strange ventriloquism … a smothered moan … a wail … weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear, yet startling with its nearness.
“The writhing concord was broken by cries for help, pierced by shrieks of paroxysm. Some begged for a drop of water. Some called on God for pity, and some on friendly hands to finish what the enemy had so horribly begun. Some with delirious, dreamy voices murmured loved names.… Some gathered their last strength to fire a musket so as to call attention to them.… And underneath, all the time, came that deep bass note from closed lips too hopeless or too heroic to articulate their agony.…”
Jackson had visitors in the evening, and though he was busy with preparations for what was expected to be a second day of slaughter, he completely relaxed at supper.
Alec Boteler had come up from Richmond, bringing, among other treasures, a pail of fresh oysters, which Jim transformed into a feast. Boteler had also brought with him an artist from Richmond, one Volck (officers did not note whether it was Frederick Volck, the sculptor, or his brother Adalbert, a caricaturist). At any rate, Jackson was persuaded to sit for sketches after dinner. Admiring staff officers watched for several minutes as Old Jack posed on a campstool, and they roared with laughter when he fell asleep. Only the outburst roused the General. It was to be five months, almost to the day, before Frederick Volck would make a far different rendering of Jackson’s face.
Lee had not forgotten that Jackson was human, and after dark he sent him an urgent reminder to bring up plentiful ammunition for tomorrow. Just as Smith was lying down to sleep, an orderly called him to Jackson’s tent, where Old Jack wordlessly passed him an order from Lee, directing him to send wagons to Guiney’s Station for bullets and shells. There was a postscript:
“I need not remind you to have the ammunition of your men and batteries replenished tonight, everything ready for daylight tomorrow. I am truly gratefu
l to the Giver of all victory for having blessed us thus far in our terrible struggle. I pray He may continue it.”
Smith went doggedly about his task of finding Jackson’s officers: “The night was dark and the troops were sleeping on the ground. Two recollections I have distinctly: One is that of finding General Early by the striking of matches by several couriers, who were trying to make a fire for the general, and his own profane abuse of his staff, who were not with him.”
As Smith rode about, Jackson dropped on his camp cot, fully clad even to spurs and sword. Boteler lay at his side. After an hour or so Jackson rose, struck a light and set up a box to shade Boteler’s eyes, under the erroneous impression that his silent companion was asleep. Old Jack was scratching out an order when he had a message from Dr. McGuire. General Maxcy Gregg, wounded during the day, was on the point of death and wanted to see Jackson.
The two generals had been under strained relations since their argument on the road to Harpers Ferry, in the days before Sharpsburg. Now, with Gregg near his end, their troubles were forgotten. Smith recalled: “It was nearly daybreak when I returned to headquarters and wrapped myself again in my blankets. But I was not yet asleep when an orderly at my tent door said, ‘Captain, the general wants you.’ Struggling into my boots once more, I found the general making his toilet, with a tin basin of water and a rough towel.”
They Called Him Stonewall Page 38